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TORONTO, July 29- A Canadian law firm said it filed a lawsuit against Fiat Chrysler Automobiles on Wednesday seeking $4 billion in damages, in connection with the massive recall announced by the automaker earlier in July. Merchant Law Group said the lawsuit, which seeks class action status, was filed in the Superior Court in Montreal. It said it plans to file claims...

NEW YORK, July 29- A former employee of a major Silicon Valley law firm was sentenced to two years in prison on Wednesday for illegally trading ahead of mergers that were underway at the firm. Braverman, an immigrant from Ukraine who lives in San Mateo, California, in court apologized for his conduct while employed in Wilson Sonsini Goodrich& Rosati's information...

NEW YORK— A former software engineer at a prominent California law firm was sentenced Wednesday to two years in prison for insider trading by a judge who noted that he should have realized the dangers of what he was doing when one of his firm's lawyers was arrested on the same charges in a separate prosecution. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer in Manhattan told...

TORONTO, July 29- A Canadian law firm said it filed a lawsuit against Fiat Chrysler Automobiles on Wednesday seeking about $4 billion in damages, in connection with the massive recall announced by the automaker earlier in July. Merchant Law Group said the lawsuit, which seeks class action status, was filed in the Superior Court in Montreal. It said it plans to file...

WASHINGTON, July 29- U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday approved a $12 billion bill to keep road and highway construction limping into the autumn, while giving themselves breathing space to hammer out a more serious solution for America's crumbling infrastructure. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 385-34 on legislation to extend highway...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— Mary Hudetz, a former Associated Press journalist and current editor of Native Peoples Magazine in Phoenix, will return to the AP in August to become the news cooperative's law enforcement reporter in Albuquerque. "We are excited to have her join our team in Albuquerque." Her nearly two-year stint as editor of the bimonthly Native Peoples...

LONDON, July 29- British American Tobacco expects its legal challenge to the implementation of "plain packaging" of tobacco in Britain to be heard in court in December, with possible final resolution by the end of 2016, a senior executive said. Britain adopted a law in March that would prohibit tobacco products from being sold with any branding, colours or logos.

In one of their last decisions before adjourning for a month, the House backed a bill that would extend spending authority for transportation programs through Oct. 29, and replenish the federal Highway Trust Fund with $8 billion. The Senate plans to take up the House bill before a midnight Friday deadline, when authority for the Transportation Department to...

Jeff Miller, R- Fla., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, would allow VA to use $3.35 billion from the new Veterans Choice program to pay for private health care for veterans from May 1 to Oct. 1. The VA has told Congress that it may shutter hospitals unless it receives flexibility to close a $2.5 billion shortfall caused by a sharp increase in demand by...

WASHINGTON— The Senate is moving toward the likely passage this week of a sweeping, six-year transportation bill, but the House is putting off consideration of the measure until this fall. Industry officials said the $350 billion Senate bill isn't ideal— not as much money as they would like and only three of the six years paid for— but they are desperate for at least...

WASHINGTON— A Democratic senator skeptical of broad government surveillance objected Tuesday to a bill that would have required social media and online sites like Google, Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook to alert U.S. authorities of any terrorist activity. The proposal had been tucked into a broader bill authorizing intelligence programs throughout the 2016...

Among the challengers were coal company Peabody Energy Corp and utility American Electric Power Co Inc.. The appeals court ruled that the EPA would have to revise sulfur dioxide emissions budgets for four states and nitrogen oxide budgets for 11 because it had asked them to reduce their emissions by more than required. The EPA has "required states to reduce...

DETROIT— The National Wildlife Federation accused the U.S. Transportation Department on Tuesday of not enforcing a federal law that requires pipeline owners and operators to establish safety response plans for worst-case oil spills in lakes, rivers and other waterways. While the pipelines that spurred the group's action are two side-by-side conduits...

The House has passed and sent to President Barack Obama a bill raising the lending authority for the Small Business Administration's biggest loan program, known as the 7 program. The bill, passed earlier by the Senate, raises the lending limit to $23.5 billion. Last year, the SBA didn't approach the limit until September, but Congress raised the ceiling before it...

NEW YORK, July 28- Forty percent of millennials have at least one tattoo, according to Pew Research Center. "If you walk into a boardroom and you have that baby girl tattoo on your neck, you may not get that job you want," said Univerity of Tampa assistant professor Kristen Foltz, who conducted the research. Katie Murtagh, a first-year law student at the Charlotte School...

VIENNA, July 28- Austria's highest court on Tuesday overturned a law that had canceled nearly a billion euros of debt owed by defunct bank Hypo Alpe Adria, raising chances that certain creditors could get some of their money back. The country's worst postwar financial scandal has swelled Austria's state debt and budget deficit, soured ties with BayernLB owner...

SAN FRANCISCO— Ivory dealers in San Francisco's Chinatown stood in their shop doors next to windows full of carved ivory tusks and trinkets, unfazed by proposed federal rules that the White House says go as far as possible to ban the U.S. trade of ivory from the world's endangered elephants. "Cow bone," Virginia Lo, manager of a Chinatown shop next door, said of the...

*Details widening U.S. probe into Puerto Rico unit. ZURICH, July 28- U.S. authorities have widened a probe into bond funds sold by UBS's Puerto Rico arm, the Swiss bank announced on Tuesday, alongside figures showing it has used up some of the money it set aside to cover legal costs and regulatory fines. They stood at 2.37 billion Swiss francs at the end of June, down from...

VIENNA, July 28- Austria's highest court on Tuesday overturned a law that wiped out some junior debtholders in defunct lender Hypo Alpe Adria, raising chances they could get part of their money back. Passed last year, the law effectively cancelled 890 million euros of subordinated debt guaranteed by Hypo's home province of Carinthia, a move that drew howls of...

WASHINGTON— The federal Export-Import Bank expired June 30 when Congress failed to renew its charter. Five things to know about the Export-Import Bank and its future:. The House announced plans Tuesday to pass a three-month highway extension that does not include an Export-Import Bank provision— and then adjourn for the summer.